16 best free Social Media plugins for WordPress

Want to boost your Social Media shares and improve the engagement within your blog or site? No better way to do it (apart from the high content itself) than with the use of some of the best free Social Media plugins for WordPress. Giving the fact that there are so many of them out there, we made a list of the ones we recommend.

Take a look, explore and choose the one which best suits your needs.

But, before you jump onto it, just a quick note on why you should have a Social Media plugin. From the UI point of view to help Google see how valuable your content is, it’s a way to get more traffic to your blog or site. Now, some may argue that those little buttons aren’t that much important, but researches show that they can improve visitor experience and improve conversions. Having a plugin that manages your Social Media buttons and overall presence has an indirect impact on your organic search rankings. The more people share your content, the more value it gets and signals to Google that your content matter. So, to have a good designed and implemented Social Media widget or plugin that engages well with visitors is a step further in improving your visibility. If in doubt, just read this Moz’s guide to social signals for SEO.

Now that we have that cleared out, here are some of the best free Social Media plugins for WordPress for you to choose from.

A free plugin that lets you connect with more than 200 social networks and web platforms. More than just a social sharing plugin, AddThis comes with social analytics feature, floating options and is highly customizable to meet your needs. Moreover, there’s an option to add Related Posts feature to boost your on-site engagement further.

A quick and easy social network plugin that lets you share your post quotes directly to Twitter. Create tweetable content in no time, helping readers to engage easily, interact and share your key messages.

Speed up your work and let a plugin do some things instead of you. Blog2Social will automatically share, republish, auto-post and schedule your blog content across Social Media for free. Currently supports all the major social networks and forum-like websites. You can share not only your content but curated one as well.

This free plugin has a premium version too, which you can buy starting from $79/year. It comes with advanced features like more social networks, adding a photo to each automated post, scheduled content curation, time manager and more.

Improve your traffic and visibility with this free and customizable Social Media plugin. Mashshare helps you optimize social sharing on your blog. It’s inspired by the well known Mashable magazine and designed to align perfectly with Facebook and Twitter. So, if you like Mashable’s way of Social Media sharing options design, you’ll love this plugin. It comes with many social network icons as well as with the email subscribe button as well. Very clean and sleek design that fits pretty well on any type of blog or site.

For more advanced users or businesses, there’s a premium option as well. Starting price is from €39.

Apart from free and premium quality WordPress themes we at Meks also develop pretty handy free plugins too. Easy Instagram Widget is your go-to Instagram management tool. A smooth and light weighted plugin that helps you display good looking Instagram photos with a few clicks of the button. There’s no Instagram authorization required, and you can use images either by Instagram username or a specific hashtag.

Furthermore, you can use multiple usernames, hashtags and its combination – which is all supported by this free plugin. Install it and see how it fits, we’re pretty sure you won’t look for any other 🙂

Another free Social Media plugin of ours. One of them is this Smart Social Widget that you can use to customize your Social Media icons and modify them to suit best to your esthetic needs. Choose between more than 100 social icons, three different shape types and define custom size for them. If you want to stand out with your SM buttons – this is a way to do so.

Great free plugin for automating sharing process of your content to Social Media. Whenever you write something on your blog or site, just use this plugin to automatically publish it on more than 30 different Social networks and blog accounts. Some of them directly and some with the help of third party API library with more networks to come along. From auto-submitting your posts to another blog platform to sharing on various social networks with customizable messages, this plugin does it all. You can even use it to automate email campaigns with MailChimp (have you seen our recent article on how to use MailChimp for WordPress?).

Pro version of this plugins comes with more features like unlimited accounts for each social network, random auto-repost, scheduled and delayed posting and more. Starting price is $49.95/year which goes lower depending on if you’re buying for one or several years.

Another great way to speed up some parts of your day-to-day work, this plugins automatically reshares your blog/site content to various Social Media platforms. As it name says, it helps you promote old content without you having to search for it and share manually. You can choose the time frame for resharing posts, time of day, a number of posts, include or exclude specific categories or posts and more.

Pro version supports more Social Media accounts, lets you make custom share messages, allows you to post with images, have a custom schedule and more. The price for this plugin starts from €75 and comes with 1 year of updates and support.

A free social network plugin with advanced options and tools to make your engagement and interaction with visitors that much better. Comes with fully customizable options to positions sharing buttons where and when you want. Free version gives you ability to choose inline or sidebar position as well as to play with animation features.

Pro version gives you more freedom with position and further custommization of colors, custom post types and more. Starting price is $19.

Freemium Social Media plugin that comes with several options to improve sharing your content and the overall blog usability. Apart from social sharing, there are email sharing button as well as the one for Reddit, Tumblr, and other sharing website networks. Also, it’s one of the few social sharing and bookmarking plugin with full support for the Retina and high-resolution displays.

Premium version comes in the form of several add-ons like grey fade effect, extra social icons, a light prompt which can be purchased on the official site.

Make interacting with your readers more fun and engaging! Social Media Flying Icons is a freemium plugin that gives your sharing buttons life. Have them float over your blog and follow readers as they scroll up or down within your posts. Easy to configure and manage, this plugin will lift your blog or site in no time. Customize your buttons by choosing one of 30 Icon Themes, configure them to show automatically or use it as a widget – up to you.

A freemium type of Social Media plugin for WordPress that has a lot to offer. Covers more than 200 Social Media platforms as well as share icons for Email and RSS. Apart from that, you can tailor those share icons to best suit to your esthetic with 16 different design types. Also, you can make them float or sticky, add animation to them and, overall, play with the way you want them to interact with your readers. Download it and start customizing it to your needs.

Premium version has some more features like pop-up options, more customization options, and tools to further improve the usage. The price for an upgraded version of this plugin is $125 but if you’re lucky enough to catch a promo deal, it can cost you no more than $25!

A plugin that we described in detail in our recent post, Social Web Suite is no stranger any more. If you need a tool that schedules and automates sharing your content to social, this is the one. Great way to improve your visibility and Social Media marketing:

A free Social Media plugin that supports more than 80 social networks comes with more than 400 custom icons to choose from as well with the options to further customize its look and usability. Furthermore, this plugin supports contact information as well, such as:

Phone numbers

Skype

Viber

WhatsApp

email address

Quick and easy to install, it helps you manage social interaction and engagement with your visitors.

A free plugin that helps you manage various social network features. Use it to integrate social logins, share and comments from one place. Supports over 100 social netforks, have several customization options to further improve the look and use of the plugin. Comes with catchy features like:

Enable url shortening to use in sharing

Horizontal and Vertical (floating) layout for sharing

Syncs user’s basic social profile data with WordPress profile

Enables users to login to your website through their existing IDs on popular social networks

Compatible with BuddyPress, bbPress, WooCommerce

Final thoughts

Whether you want better visibility, sharing options, or more meaningful interaction and engagement, these are the plugins to help you achieve all that. Some are all-in-one solutions; other offers more specific ones. Either way, among thousands free Social Media plugins for WordPress, these are the ones you should test and try for your purposes.

Feel free to share which one did you choose or if there’s any more that should be included in this list.

Ivana Cirkovic

Ivana is a Digital Marketing, PR and Social Media consultant with over nine years experience in the field. She is also a WordPress enthusiast and an active member of WordPress community who lives online almost 24/7. In love with Twitter, WP, photography and NYC.